Analytical Placement Student Review

The whole year has been amazing. I've learnt so much and gained so much confidence in the lab. The people in my team have been very welcoming and helpful and I've felt comfortable approaching anyone from within the company for help. I feel completely integrated in the team and I feel that my work has been valued by others.

As soon as I started I was treated like any other member of the team. I was invited to all relevant meetings for the work I was doing and was even encouraged to lead 'work in progress' meetings. I don't feel I can give 10 stars rating as sometimes, because my level of expertise doesn't quite match that of the other analysts, there were a few moments in technical meetings where I felt a bit left behind with the context and therefore didn't always feel comfortable making contributions.

I had a placement supervisor and two student project supervisors. All were very approachable and eager to help and provide me with all the resources I needed. Luckily, I shared an office with all my supervisors so I felt comfortable with walking over and having a conversation or asking questions about my work.

It varied greatly. At the start, there was a lot of training and reading SOPs. Then throughout the year, within my team we went through phases of very busy times with tight deadlines and then quieter weeks where not much analysis was needed to be done. Overall however it was a good balance. The only thing which interfered was uni work which made me very stressed and tired around deadline times.

For my student project, I had about 95% responsibility of the work. I did all of the lab work, fed back to my supervisors and together we decided on what I should do for the next lots of experiments. There was also a lot of communication with other staff at the site and instrument manufacturers which I had to do. But throughout, my supervisors were always there to guide me and get me in touch with the necessary contacts. Within the analytical team, less of the responsibility was given to myself as I had the least experience and was given a lot of help/worked with other analysts on most of the experiments. However, if I at any point wanted to perform a new type of analysis or do an experiment on my own, this wouldn't have been turned down.

All of the skills I've learnt here will help me in my future work. I can't fault the amount of training that is available to everyone here, and not just in my area of work which was analytical, but I was free to sign up to any type of training I wished to do. Before I came here I wasn't really interested in lab work and found it all a bit confusing and stressful, but this year has allowed me to familiarise myself with practices in the lab and now I actually enjoy it.

Very friendly and informal. I felt comfortable talking to anyone within my office about work and non-work related things. It was a very open environment with small meeting pods if you did want a private discussion and a larger meeting room for more technical things. Overall I got on very well with everyone in my office.

I started off with 6 weeks of training. This involved theory and practical training and reading a lot of SOPs. I also did a lot of lab shadowing during this time. Once I was signed off in my training, I was free to take on analytical work. The work was given out during team meetings and I was free to take on as much or little work as I felt I could manage. Then when it came to my 10 week student project period, the timeline was very flexible depending on university deadlines and other things I had planned. It was left almost entirely to me to decide when I'd like to start, (this was not the case for all placement students though). I was also able to extend my project time as long as my other analytical work still had priority.

A lot of emphasis was put on developing myself and taking advantage of all opportunities to do so. AZ have a website where the staff are free to show an interest in any training that is provided. When enough interest has been shown, a training session will be organised. This made it so easy to develop my LC and other chemistry knowledge while I've been here.

Very, this has been a great place to work with many perks. However, I have been given the impression that it's very difficult to work your way up the company into new roles. Whereas switching between roles of the same level of expertise is easy. So I'd personally come back only once I feel I have the qualifications to start at the level I wish to be at.

The students all got on extremely well. We saw each other all week at work and organised social things to do throughout the week. I only have positive things to say about the other students I've met on placement. We've all been through the same stresses with uni work and the same experiences in and out of work so it's been a great support system. In the summer we even went on a week holiday together, we'll definitely be staying in touch after we leave.

Macclesfield is really cheap. In terms of accommodation - I shared a 2 bed flat near the hospital and this was £525 a month without bills. The only downside was that we had to drive in every day. Most other students lived in the centre which was also very reasonable prices and within walking/cycling distance to AZ. Socialising in Macclesfield mostly consisted of going to pubs and these were typical northern prices.

There's one main 'nightclub' in Macclesfield which we sometimes went to called Fever. But a lot of smaller bars and loads of pubs which are good for pub crawls. The Society Rooms (Wetherspoons) and Red Willow, were also quite popular places to go to with AZ staff and students. Apart from that, we mostly met up at each others houses or went out to Manchester if we did want a night out.

Yes. Lots of social events were organised from meals out, lunchtime walks, peak district walks after work, bouldering, yoga and so many more. I even organised a team social myself for my whole team - this was Junkyard golf in Manchester followed by a meal out. There is also the Christmas work do at Tatton which is lots of fun.